1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an agricultural bagging machine and more particularly to an agricultural bagging machine having a hopper designed to substantially reduce the bridging of the silage material or the like within the hopper.
2. Background Information
Agricultural bagging machines have been employed for several years to bag or pack silage or the like into elongated plastic bags. Two of the earliest bagging machines are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,687,061 and 4,046,068. In most prior art bagging machines, silage or the like is supplied to the forward or intake end of the bagging machine and is fed to a rotor which conveys the silage into a tunnel on which the bag is positioned so that the bag is filled. In most prior art bagging machines, the rotor is located at the lower end of a hopper. Ordinarily, the hopper includes a sloped forward wall and a substantially vertically disposed back wall. The sloped front wall is sometimes referred to as a hopper panel while the back wall is sometimes referred to as a face panel.
Inasmuch as the front wall of the conventional hopper is sloped and inasmuch as the back wall of the conventional hopper is substantially vertically disposed, the vertical cross section of the hopper has a funnel shape. When the feed stuffs or silage are put in the hopper of the machine, the funnel-shape may cause the material to build up until the material bridges over the rotor causing the rotor to take in less feed or none at all depending on the degree of bridging.